The moral dimension of X Factor brought some questionable debate, but Johnny Vegas's Les Dawson was a class act
Moral Maze | R4
Chris Evans | R2
Afternoon Play: Cheque Book and Pen | R4
When did we stop loving music, or enjoying television, and become Consumers of Culture? That was one of many questions raised by a Moral Maze devoted to The X Factor.
Clare Fox, a former Revolutionary Communist, and now director of something called, desperately you assumed, the Institute of Ideas, could see nothing wrong with Simon Cowell's bland pitch for world domination. She was, she said, "an unapologetic consumer of The X Factor". Patrick Strudwick, a former classical musician and now features editor of New! magazine, was even more proud of his "consumption" of the talent show, arguing that it did a "great cultural service to the country".
Everyone, as is the rule in cultural elites, was desperate not to be elitist. There was a short discussion of the comparative merits of Richard Wagner and the pony-tailed X Factor Wagner Carrilho, in which a professor of culture, media and sport at the University of Staffordshire seemed to be claiming they were men of broadly equal talent.
Michael Buerk, so studiously impartial, felt, in the spirit of full disclosure, he had to come clean about the fact he had been asked to be a dancer on Strictly "two or three times" and had turned them down. It was left to Michael Portillo to be the voice of reason: these celebrity shows, he suggested, were our equivalent of pointing at the village idiot; they worked on the principle, he said, of "let's get some real berks to laugh at", before adding that his use of the word berk was not a dig at the presenter. Of course.
Michael McIntyre, who is in that phase of his career where he is distributed evenly across all possible media, until he gets too annoying to contemplate, popped up on the Chris Evans breakfast show to discuss the fact that he had replaced Piers Morgan as a Britain's Got Talent judge. It was, he said, with no trademark giggle, a "great honour" to have been asked, and refused to reveal even the smallest indiscreet detail about Cowell's house, where the deal had been struck.
McIntyre is a cheeky chappie but only up to a point, as Evans, who is always just that little bit more acid than he seems, deftly revealed. "Until it was press-released I wasn't sure it really happened," said McIntyre breathlessly; how we laughed.
Johnny Vegas used to be the ubiquitous clown of the moment but, having been promoted as the most unpredictable man in light entertainment, became slightly too unpredictable and now seems required to attempt reinvention as a character actor. The acute afternoon play he co-wrote, Cheque Book and Pen, conjured up the ghost of Les Dawson, with Vegas doing an impassioned impression of the comedian in his awkward Blankety Blank days. Nicholas Parsons, who happily seems to have forgotten where self-parody lies, was the dame of the piece, playing himself as a devious game-show host rival.
Vegas's play discovered a moral of its own in the compromises Dawson was forced to make to become a prime-time star; in a bravura closing argument, he put the case that creativity had nothing to do with packaging or consumers but was all about "doing what you believe is right and doing it your way". Try telling that to Simon Cowell.
Psychology Work & careers Alex Reid Robert Schumann Blackpool Stephen Carr
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